


Condemned to Eternal Drought

by Anniel



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coma, M/M, POV Napoleon, Rating May Change, also i don't think the violence is graphic but just in case
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2020-12-01 21:31:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20905373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anniel/pseuds/Anniel
Summary: They've been in hot waters many times during their partnership but not like this.Never like this.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first delve into the TV-verse and I am not American or even a native English speaker so please let me know if you notice any mistakes/inconsistencies.

The world surrounding Napoleon is simultaneously too slow and excruciatingly fast.

He is partially aware that the throbbing in his head and the blurry road in front of him aren't exactly good omens.

His legs are unsteady even as he is running.

Or maybe he isn't running.

Maybe the weight in his arms is too heavy, keeping him from moving.

Goosebumps rise on his skin as the biting nordic wind hits his wet skin.

His clothes are soaked through but his face is dry.

* * *

He snaps his eyes shut.

The lights are too bright, burning the back of his skull.

He feels the weight being lifted from him and instinctively he holds on to it but his fingers are too numb and so it's ripped from his grasp.

There are voices but he can't understand what they're saying. When he dares to open his eyes the shapes in front of him are rapid and bright and make his head spin even more.

He's lifted into the air and for a fleeting moment, he thinks it might be angels taking him to stand in front of Saint Peter but then he retches violently and the grip of whoever has been holding him falters and he hits the ground.

So probably not angels.

The concept of a clumsy angel appears in his mind and makes him chuckle.

He feels a sudden prickle in his arm and then the images around him start to mix with black until there is nothing left. Not even him.

* * *

He wakes up to a brightly lit white room, his skull feeling like it's going to fall apart at the seams.

It takes him a moment to get his mind to full alertness and by the time he does he's already jumping out of the bed just in time to startle the nurse opening the door.

"Where's Illya?", he barks out at the poor woman, not caring how harsh he sounds in his panic.

He doesn't remember much after they stormed the THRUSH base but he remembers the feeling of blood on his skin, not only on his hands but soaking through his clothes.

So much blood. There had to have been so much blood.

"Where is he!?" he damn near yells. Why isn't anyone telling him?

"He's stabilized and we are doing everything we can for him."

He's heard a similar phrase many times during his career but this time it doesn't calm him. The nurse looks too nervous to tell him something and he feels sudden anger at this woman who's probably just too young and new to the profession to tell him something terrible straight away.

"What is it? Where is he?" He walks out of his room, into the hallway, still half expecting to see Illya bickering with a doctor that he's well enough to go home.

"Agent Solo," the nurse seems to have gathered some courage, "Your partner is being treated by the best we have to offer and you interfering won't do anything,"

He opens his mouth to argue.

"At the moment Agent Kuryakin is not conscious anyway and I need to check that there is no permanent damage on your part."

He still can't shake the feeling of dread in his stomach but if Illya is unconscious there truly is nothing for him to do other than trust the doctors to do their jobs. Afterall, UNCLE only hires the best.

He realizes that he is not exactly sure where he is.

He looks around the hallway but sees nothing that would help him identify whether he's in an UNCLE infirmary or an UNCLE-friendly hospital.

The nurse notices and smiles, "You are in the Oslo UNCLE headquarters Agent Solo."

"Napoleon, please," he gives her a wide smile in an effort to make her forget his previous outburst.

She smiles at him sheepishly and he knows it worked.

He tries to be as a present as possible while she performs the tests on him so he doesn't have to think about Illya.

He's doing just fine when he has questions to answer.

What year it is? 1965

Who's the president? Johnson

Does he remember the week leading up to his injury? Yes, pretty clearly.

Does he remember how he got injured? Yes, he got hit from behind with a brick, he's lucky to be alive, really.

Does he remember how he got into the city? Not in detail.

After all this, she determines that there is no apparent memory loss though she seems irritated at his curt answers.

Well, he can't tell her anything more specific even if he wanted to.

After that he finds himself zoning out as she takes his pressure.

His brows quirk up when she takes out a needle.

"You had very heavy drugs in your system Agent Solo, we need to make sure they are all flushed out."

Oh, he remembers now.

He answers all her attempts at conversation automatically while he worries needlessly about Illya.

Unconscious, she said.

It _is_ easier to get Illya to cooperate when he can't argue with you. And he _did_ lose a lot of blood so it's probably for the better that he rests.

But she said unconscious not sleeping.

"I need to see my partner now."

She nods, "I'll get someone to talk to you."

He leans his head against the wall, it's pulsing with pain like crazy and they can't give him any painkillers until they are sure he's got no more drugs in him.

Not long after the nurse leaves a tall man in a lab coat comes in.

"Hello Agent Solo, I'm Dr. Svenningdal,  
glad to see you awake. How are you faring?"

"Fine, how's Illya?"

The man's face draws back in a mask of professional empathy, the face of a man that has had to deliver countless bad news over his medical career. Napoleon recognizes it, for he has the same mask on way too often.

"Agent Kuryakin is in a coma at the moment"

No.

Napoleon feels all blood drain from his face and he grabs the railing of the bed so he doesn't stumble. But maybe-

"A medically induced one?"

The doctor gives him a sympathetic smile, "I'm afraid not"

"Well, will he wake up?" He can't let himself fall into hysterics, surely Illya will be just fine.

"At this stage, we can't tell."

Dear lord

"Can I see him?"

Have mercy

"Yes, we are done with him for now, follow me."

He leads napoleon into a room at the end of the hallway.

In it lies Illya, stiff and pale, his arms poked through with more IVs than Napoleon's ever seen in one person.

"What's all that for?" he asks, so that he has an excuse to tear his eyes away from Illya's pitiful form and look at the doctor.

"Well he's lost a lot of blood, but besides that, he's been pumped even more full of drugs then you were. What they gave you was pretty standard but we are still on the fence about what they concocted for him."

"Did you try to wake him?"

"As I said he's under the influence of very experimental drugs, there is nothing we can do until they are fully flushed out. Besides, it's very well possible that as soon as the drugs are out of his system he'll wake up on his own."

Except he doesn't.


	2. Chapter 2

Napoleon only leaves the Oslo infirmary to write up a report and send it to the New York HQ. He's allowed to stay. For now.

The nurse that was there when he first woke up, Nora, seems to have taken it upon herself to make sure he eats and rests between keeping post beside Illya's bed.

On the first day Napoleon is overcome with fear but he still wholeheartedly believes that Illya will wake up any minute now. He even makes a few weak jokes to Nora about Illya never being an early bird.

After he spends his night in a chair next to Illya's motionless battered body a young janitor named Henrik brings him a folding bed.

By the end of the second day, he knows every doctor and nurse and medical support staff by name. At some point, every one of them has looked at him with either pity or sympathy.

For the first time in his life, he is glad he can't understand a language when he hears nurses talk in pitying voices behind his back.

When it's been three days since Illya has fallen into a coma Dr. Svenningdal tells him that he could wake up in days or weeks or never and that there is nothing else to do but hope.

And god does he hope.

He hopes and hopes but Illya's state doesn't change and on the fourth day he's called back to the NY HQ

Illya won't be going back to New York with him. Not now, anyway. They say that in the state that he's in moving him could be fatal.

So he goes to say his goodbyes.

It's been four days and the bruises on Illya's body are yellow and dull purple. He has a cast on his left leg and the doctors say the stab wounds are healing nicely.

When Napoleon first made the mistake of insisting that he won't leave his partner even when they need to change the dressings he was left breathless at the sight of Illya's wrecked torso. There's countless shallow cuts and bruises from when he was tortured but the deep stitched up wounds are the thing that makes bile rise up in his throat. The skin around them is stretched and irritated and the way they still bleed when the nurses change Illya's bandages makes Napoleon remember all the blood on his body from just a few days ago way too vividly.

Napoleon can't look at Illya's chest without seeing the tortured body underneath the blankets in front of his eyes.

He hasn't said a single word to Illya the entire time he's been there, can't bring himself to say his stupid little quips without hearing Illya's annoyed sigh or seeing his signature irritated glare.

But if he says goodbye maybe it'll feel less like he's leaving his partner to rot in a foreign country and more like he's just going on a separate mission. They do that all the time.

They used to do that all the time.

He's been waiting for it all to come crashing down on him and now it does.

They might never do that again. He might never drive Illya to the airport in a godawful hour in the morning. He might never again envelope him in a hug after he returns from a mission

He takes Illya's cold palm into his own and holds it to his lips as he cries onto it until he has no more tears left.

He thinks that at one point he heard the door open but he didn't look.

He only let's go when he sees it get darker outside and even then he momentarily considers missing his overnight flight.

"See you soon partner," he chokes out and plants a brief kiss to Illya's forehead before he walks out the door and doesn't turn back because he knows if he did he would never board the plane back to the US.

* * *

By the time he gets to the UNCLE HQ the next morning, everyone seems to already know what has happened since working for a spy organization doesn't in any way reduce gossiping.

During his way to the office alone, at least a dozen people stop him to tell they are sure that Illya will be just fine.

Throughout the day people stop by his and Illya's office and he tries his best to be polite even though the only thing he wants to do is scream.

He has a meeting with Waverly in the afternoon and he couldn't be more grateful to the old man for sparing him the sympathetic platitudes he's been subjected to the whole day.

They go through Napoleon's report since Illya's is usually the one that writes them so his own is, in Waverly's words, "unconcise". But he knows the old man well enough to know that it's not just that. Waverly has to have seen the reports Oslo infirmary has sent to him and he is right to be worried about one of his best agents

So Napoleon recounts the mission and the aftermath.

* * *

An American chemist was abducted while at a conference in Oslo and it was suspected that THRUSH was behind the kidnapping so they were sent to investigate since they haven't had much experience with THRUSH in Norway.

All leads seemed to, indeed, be pointing to THRUSH, and not only that, Illya was sure that he has also found their base. They were staking out the on-paper abandoned factory building on the outskirts of Oslo when they got a call from one of the people that had attended the same conference as their chemist, saying that he remembered something more but could only speak in person.

When Napoleon reached the man's apartment it was empty and he spent some time searching the apartment and the building but he found nothing.

* * *

He now regrets every moment he spent searching that man's apartment

* * *

He called Illya on the walkie-talkie but he didn't respond the first time, which was to be a reason for half-hearted reprimanding. He didn't respond the second time when Napoleon was already in the car, and he didn't respond the third time at which point Napoleon was already speeding through the city. Not responding to a call was not abnormal, but with the apartment being empty Napoleon was suspicious.

It took him way too much time to get to the presumed THRUSH base, the man's apartment being on pretty much the opposite end of Oslo.

When he reached the factory building it's been hours since he had last seen Illya. He crawled to the well-hidden place where Illya had set up their stakeout but he wasn't there. There was no sign of struggle though, and Illya's binoculars were laying on the ground

Napoleon ringed the Olso HQ for back up, beating his head for not doing it sooner.

He decided to make his way into the building through a possible blind spot Illya had found, not thinking about how he might be going in the same way Illya did and getting abducted too.

Of course, he didn't know whether Illya got caught, though statistically speaking it was more than possible.

There was a distinct lack of cameras and any technical security inside and bricks and pipes were scattered in piles on the floor. They had to have been just setting up the place.

He searched through the building, which was so far empty except for a few guards, which he darted.  
He went into the underground floor and there he heard it. Grunts of pain that were unmistakably Illya's.

He sneaked up towards the room, peaking through the glass door window. Illya was tied to a chair with his shirt off and his chest bruised and bleeding from shallow cuts.

A man was laying unmovingly face down on the concrete floor.

He could see two men standing guard in the room and one man in a lab coat holding a bloody scalpel.

If he were quick enough maybe he could dispatch them all before anything happened to Illya.

He stormed into the room shooting the guards before they could even take a shot at him but he's not quick enough. The man in the lab coat ducked behind Illya's chair and was pressing the scalpel against Illya's throat.

"I will kill him!" shrieked the man, "Don't move and drop your weapon."

In most other situations Napoleon would have made a quip about how he can't do both but the man looked positively mad so he didn't antagonize him.

He dropped the gun.

Illya was still quiet and his eyes a weirdly droopy. He had to have been sedated

"What did-"

A sharp thud to the back of his head sent Napoleon to his hands and knees. He hadn't noticed anyone approaching.

His limbs gave up from under him and he fell to the ground.

He peripherally saw a woman come from behind him. Holding a brick in her hand. A brick with his blood on it. She checked the pulse of the man on the ground and Illya's head lolled to the side as the lab-coated man let go of his hair.

"You need to be more careful," she said and picked up a syringe from the table near Illya's chair

Napoleon tried to grab for the gun in his ankle holster when she came close to him, but his body wasn't listening to him and he couldn't fight the sharp prick of a needle at his nape.

The world went black almost immediately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> most of this chapter is a flashback that i only decided i want in the past tense after i wrote it completely in the present tense. what i am trying to say is that editing this sent me back to the present-tense-to-past-tense exercises from when i first started learning english.  
also i know italics are kinda the standard for flashbacks/dreams/whatever but i find them hard to read when there's more then like one sentence sooo i tried to format this differently hoping it won't be garbage.


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